ADELAIDE'S COMMUNITY and
Educational Television, ("ACE-TV"), which had originally
defended a decision to schedule a one-hour program produced
by what the station spokesman described as "neo-Nazi
apologists", has revoked the decision following a series of
protests.

The film, which features English writer and Holocaust
denier David Irving arguing that the facts of the
Nazi Holocaust are myths created by the Jewish world and the
State of Israel for propaganda purposes, was submitted for
broadcast by Frederick Toben,
who runs an organisation which disseminates Holocaust denial
propaganda under the name of the "Adelaide Institute" (which
until recently was know as "Truth Missions"). The video,
called "A Search for Truth in History", had been shown in an
Adelaide social club last year while withdrawn from
broadcast by a number of planned Australian venues. ACE-TV
is an open access community station which "has a charter to
reflect the views of the total community, including extreme
views", according to the station manager.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry, which is the
elected representative organisation of the Australian Jewish
community, wrote to ACE-TV to record the Jewish community's
"strongest possible objection to having your station serve
as a vehicle for the broadcast of what appears to be
neo-Nazi propaganda".

"To maintain that any intelligent understanding of the
philosophy of liberalism, which includes the ideal of
freedom of speech, includes the right of any individual to
deliberately cause harm to another individual is to display
a gross misunderstanding of the basis of that philosophy",
the ECAJ argued.

Jack Hines, the President of the Jewish Community
Council of South Australia, also wrote to the station
arguing that "Holocaust denial is clear, unambiguous
anti-Jewish propaganda".

He added that to broadcast the program would be in breach
of the guidelines of the Australian Broadcasting Authority
which state that "a licensee may not transmit a program
likely to incite, perpetuate hatred against or gratuitously
vilify any person or group on the basis of ethnicity,
nationality, race, gender, sexual preference, religion or
physical or mental disability". Hines' letter said that "the
Jewish community of South Australia includes many Holocaust
survivors and that to present for them on television the
works of a so-called historian (who has no academic
qualifications) is only going to create further anguish for
them".

The influential daily, the Canberra Times, ran an
editorial favoring the broadcast of the programme, claiming
that "in a free and open society the best way of making sure
that inhumane and intolerant views or political movements do
not take root, is to expose those views to public scrutiny
and debate".

The program was scheduled to be broadcast on September 1
[1994], but on August 12 the ACE-TV board met and
reversed its decision .

Rita Freeman said that ACE-TV "will never allow
the channel, or the cultural resource it represents, to be
used to incite racial acrimony especially by a non-member of
the community [David Irving] whose expressed
views do not appear to reflect the opinions of the
majority", noting that "the so-called 'search for truth'
[in the film's title] is merely a denigration of the
Holocaust".